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SHEPARD 
The  Work  of  a  Social  Teacher, 


■JWUUiT 


H\1 
22 
J6  L7 


ECONOMIC    TRACTS.     No.  XII. 


THE  WORK  OF  A  SOCIAL  TEACHER 


lSKING    A    MEMORIAL    (')I' 


RICHARD    L.    DUGDALE 


EDWARD    M.  SHEPARD 


NEW  YORK 

THE  SOCIETY  FOR  POLITICAL  EDUCATION 

4    MORTON    STREET 

1884 


This  Memorial  is  issued  as  one  of  the  regular  tracts  of  the  Society, 
in  the  belief  that  it  will  directly  serve  the  cause  of  Political  Educa- 
tion l)y  showing  how  much  good  one  man,  working  against  many 
disadvantages,  may  do  even  in  a  short  life,  and  by  inspiring  others 
to  do  their  part  in  the  kind  of  work  to  which  he  gave  his  life. 


The  Work  of  a  Social  Teacher. 

BEING    A    MEMORIAL    OF 

RICHARD  L.  DUGDALE. 

The  men  are  very  few  indeed,  whose  best  years 
and  whose  most  fruitful  labor  are  given,  not  to 
themselves  and  to  those  dear  to  them,  but  for  the 
sake  of  mankind.  And  of  these,  the  men  are  still 
fewer  whose  years  of  active  usefulness  are  conse- 
crated to  the  service  of  human  beings  repulsive  to 
the  sight  and  hateful  to  think  of — human  beings 
who  do  not  know  or  understand  their  benefactors, 
and  who,  if  they  did  know  them,  would  return  no 
conscious  gratitude.  Inspiration  cannot  be  found 
for  these  men  even  in  the  well-earned  and  grateful 
applause  of  their  own  time.  That  applause  goes 
most  often  and  most  freely  to  what  is  obvious  and 
splendid  in  performance,  to  what  appeals  directly 
and  intelligibly  to  the  fellow-feeling  of  men  who 
are  well  housed,  well  fed,  and  well  clothed.  The 
founders  of  those  schools  and  hospitals  whose  fine 
facades  and  spacious  and  comfortable  rooms  are 
always  before  our  eyes,  the  discoverer  of  remedies 

i 


which  an)r  one  of  us,  however  fortunate  his  condi- 
tion, may  by  and  by  need — these  benefactors  we 
easily  and  warmly  appreciate.  They  are  agreeable 
figures  in  crowded  drawing-rooms;  the  crown  of  the 
civic  hero  is  ready  for  them  in  every  meeting  of 
reputable  and  happy  citizens.  But  toward  the 
men  whose  walks  of  mercy  are  in  haunts  we  never 
willingly  see  or  imagine — whose  tenderness  touches 
and  whose  intelligence  raises  wretches  of  moral 
degradation  and  physical  loathsomeness  which  we 
banish  from  our  thoughts  almost  as  completely  as 
we  do  from  our  eyes  and  ears — toward  those  men 
there  goes  from  us  scant  and  frigid  recognition, 
until  long  after  a  just  recognition  is  too  late  to  be 
to  them  either  help  or  reward,  or  to  bring  them  the 
sweet  and  triumphant  sense  of  appreciation  wist- 
fully sought  by  even  the  saviors  of  mankind. 
The\"  become  themselves  part  of  a  disagreeable  and 
repulsive  subject.  Upon  the  fingers  of  one  hand 
may  be  counted,  for  any  one  generation,  the  heroes 
who  suffer  through  life  this  almost  hardest  of  sac- 
rifices for  their  fellow-men.  Among  these  heroes 
was  Richard  L.  Dut.dale,  who  died  at  New  York 
on  the  23d  of   July.  1883. 

Mr.  Dugdale's  father  and  mother  were  English, 
having  a  natural  pride  in  an  ancestry  of  much  social 
distinction — a   pride    which    did    not,  however,  curb 


the  utmost  democracy  of  sentiment  and  practical 
life.  He  was  born  at  Paris  in  1841,  his  father  being 
there  engaged  in  business.  On  suffering  serious 
pecuniary  reverses,  his  father  returned  to  England 
in  1848.  The  son  developed  in  his  London  home 
artistic  tastes  which  led  to  his  being  placed  in  the 
government  drawing-school  at  Somerset  House. 
Here  he  was  engaged  when  in  185 1  his  family  came 
to  America.  In  New  York  he  attended  a  public 
school  for  two  or  three  years  ;  and  then,  at  the  age 
of  fourteen,  was  employed  by  a  sculptor  with  whom 
he  did  very  creditable  artistic  work.  The  shadow 
of  disease  was  however  already  over  him.  A  serious 
exposure  while  at  the  public  school  had  irreparably 
impaired  his  very  delicate  constitution  ;  and  when 
about  seventeen  years  old  it  was  thought  necessary 
for  his  health  that  his  family  should  remove  to  a 
farm  purchased  by  his  father  in  Indiana.  Young 
Dugclale's  strength  did  not  however  sufficiently  in- 
crease to  fit  him  for  the  work  of  a  farmer;  and  in 
i860  he  returned  with  his  family  to  New  York, 
During  his  absence  he  had  with  characteristic 
industry  learned  phonography,  an  art  he  afterward 
practised  for  a  short  time  as  a  means  of  livelihood. 

Entering  business,  as  he  was  compelled  to  do, 
upon  his  return  to  New  York,  Mr.  Dugdale  attended 
the  admirable   night  classes  of   the  Cooper  Union. 


Mere,  and  especial!}'  in  the  debating  clubs,  he  easily 
distinguished    himself.      He  had  already,  doubtless 
through  natural  aptitude  and  from  his   reading,  be- 
come greatly  interested  in  social  subjects.      He  then 
keenly  desired  to  devote  himself  to  the  methodical 
study  of  social  science.      He  afterward  said  of  this 
time  :    "At  twenty-three  I  clearly  saw  that,  even  did 
I  possess  the  most  perfect  technical  training  to  enable 
me  to  analyse  the  complex  questions  involved,  there 
was  no  institution  or  patron   to  defray  the  expenses 
of  a    continuous,  calm,  independent,  and   unconven- 
tional critical  study  of  social  phenomena.     I.  there- 
fore, had  to  confront  this  practical  question — to  earn 
the  costs  of  an  education  which  no  college  provided, 
and  amass  sufficient  fortune  to  purchase  the  privilege 
of    independent    subsequent    inquiry.      1     met    the 
dilemma  by   entering  the    career   of   merchant   and 
manufacture:]-,  because  this  combined  the  opportun- 
ity for  stud\-  of  a  distinct  class  of  social  phenomena 
and   tb.e   promise   of   earning  the   means   for   future 
freedom    of   investigation.      After  ten  years  of  this 
double  work,  I  broke  down  in  health,  yet  I  continued 
business  for  two  years  more  until  my  physician  per- 
emptorily ordered    rest,    physical  and  mental;    and 
for  four  years  I  could  neither  earn  nor  learn." 

ilow  active   and  multifarious  was  Mr.   Dugdale's 
interest  in   social   subjects  during  the  vcars  he  thus 


5 

mentions,  one  may  easily  imagine  from  an  imperfect 
list  of  the  bodies  of  which  he  was  a  zealous  and  im- 
portant member.  He  was  Secretary  of  the  Section 
on  Sociology  of  the  New  York  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science  and  the  Arts ;  he  was 
Secretary  of  the  New  York  Social  Science  Society, 
and  of  the  New  York  Sociology  Club  ;  he  was 
Treasurer  of  the  New  York  Liberal  Club  ;  he  was 
Vice-President  of  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
Street  Accidents  ;  he  was  later,  for  a  time,  Secretary 
of  the  Civil-Service  Reform  Association  ;  he  was  an 
active  member  of  the  American  Social  Science  Asso- 
ciation and  of  the  American  Public  Health  Associ- 
ation. He  was  also  a  member  of  the  American  Free- 
Trade  League,  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  and  of 
the  American  Institute. 

Nor  did  this  varied  work  indicate  either  restless- 
ness or  superficiality  of  intellectual  interest.  These 
clubs  and  associations  were  nearly  all  directly  re- 
lated to  the  amelioration  of  the  condition  of  men. 
Those  to  which  his  time  was  chiefly  given  had  to 
do  with  men  who  were  suffering  because  of  their 
poverty,  or  vice,  or  the  oppression  of  others,  or  the 
singularity  of  their  opinions.  During  the  years  of 
his  business  career  his  spare  energy,  never  daunted 
by  the  savage  threats  of  the  disease  which  hung  over 
the  years  of  his  manhood,  was  spent  in  this  field  of 


beneficence.  And  until  his  death  his  zeal  and  in- 
terest remained  undiminished  in  all  the  reforms 
which  these  bodies  were  intended  to  promote.  Mr. 
Dugdale  was,  however,  to  find  his  chief  fame  in  the 
work  of  bettering  the  condition  of  prisoners.  These 
fellow-beings  commended  themselves  to  him  because 
they  were  suffering,  and  because  they  were  not  only 
friendless,  but  to  most  men  were  odious.  In  the 
criminal  or  vicious  life,  in  the  inherited  disease,  or 
in  the  degradation  of  their  former  environment,  his 
hopeful  and  buoyant  sympathy  found  glimmering 
the  faint   light  of  a  ]  moral  restoration.     Or, 

where  this  light  had  quite  flickered  out.  lie  then 
sought  the  lessons  grimly  taught  by  the  hopeless 
career-  of  k  st  men  and  women.     These  lessons  and 

possible    he 


the   causes  which    n 


;uch    career. 


learned  to  a  merciful  purpose. 

He  became  a  member  of  the  Executive  Commit- 
tee of  the  Prison  Association  of  Xcw  York  in  1S6S. 
In  the  wi  >rk  of  this  society,  inspired  as  it  v." as  by  the 
loftiest  humanitarian  impulses,  but  tread!:  g  always 
the  firm  ground  of  practical  beneficence,  there  was 
most  admirable'  opportunity  tor  the  exercise  of  his 
ities.  LTitil  his  death  lie  gave  it  unstinted  time 
and  lab  >r.  The  work  of  this  famous  association 
was  twofold:  first,  the  improvement  of  prison  dis- 
cipline,   the     intelligent    separation,    grouping    and 


7 

treatment  of  convicts,  so  that  they  should  acquire 
new  and  wholesome  habits  of  work,  attention,  and 
thought,  and  that  they  should  not,  at  least,  grow  in 
depravity  while  within  the  prison  walls  ;  and  sec- 
ondly, the  practical  aid  of  convicts,  after  their  re- 
lease, to  earn  an  honest  livelihood.  Mr.  Dugdale 
expended  a  vast  amount  of  time,  and  drew  heavily 
upon  his  private  resources  in  visits  to  the  different 
prisons  and  jails  of  the  State.  Not  shrinking  from 
work  singularly  repulsive  to  one  of  so  gentle  a  tem- 
per, he  made  the  personal  acquaintance  of  many 
convicted  or  reputed  criminals  in  and  out  of  prisons. 
He  learned  their  biographies.  He  heard  their  case 
against  society,  as  well  as  the  more  obvious  though 
perhaps  no  stronger  case  of  society  against  them. 
The  result  of  this  investigation  is  given  in  the 
famous  brocJiure  ''The  Jukes,"  which  he  published 
in  1877.  This  study  of  hereditary  crime  and  pau- 
perism, profoundly  useful  and  interesting  as  it  was 
in  spite  of  the  unavoidable  horror  of  its  details,  at 
once  attracted  wide-spread  attention.  In  this  coun- 
try and  Europe  it  has  been  read  and  quoted  to  the 
present  time.  The  plain  sobriety  of  its  statements, 
often  compressing  into  schedules  the  result  of  most 
laborious  and  accurate  research,  rather  heightens  the 
effect  of  its  appalling  picture  of  a  life  which  goes  on 
at  the  heart  of  our  civilization,  and    from   the  taint 


of  which  no  one  wholly  escapes.  From  the  facts  of 
"  The  Jukes,"  Mr.  Dugdale  drew  very  important  and 
far-reaching  generalizations.  He  concluded  that 
there  is  hope  in  the  physical  and  mental  vigor  of 
criminals;  that  there  is  hopelessness  in  the  absence 
of  that  vigor  in  paupers  ;  that  pauperism  is  more, 
therefore,  to  be  dreaded  than  crime  ;  that  the  mis- 
directed energy  of  the  latter  may,  by  proper  dis- 
cipline, be  diverted  to  useful  work;  but  that  the 
sooner  death  comes  the  better,  to  the  "  under- 
vitalization  and  consequent  untrainableness  "  of 
pauperism  ;  that  it  is  a  crime  to  so  maintain  paupers 
that  they  ma}-  breed  another  and  perhaps  more 
numerous  generation  of  their  own  kind  ;  that  licen- 
tiousness is  the  concomitant  and  a  chief  cause  both 
of  pauperism  and  crime  ;  and  that  the  open  aban- 
donment of  virtue  in  women  is  the  dreadful  ana- 
logue of  pauperism  and  crime  in  men.  There  is,  in 
"  The  Jukes,"  no  aesthetic  and  fatuous  ignoring  of  the 
gross  and  repulsive  causes  of  so  much  of  pauperism 
and  disease. — causes  which,  however  pleasantly 
veiled  by  euphemisms,  are  still  an  ever-present  and 
an  ever-dreadful  obstacle  to  making  humanity  bet- 
ter and  happier.  Nor  did  Air.  Dugdale  propose  by 
an}*  false  tenderness  to  evade  the  real  problem,  hie 
would  not  prevent  nature,  with  inexorable  benefi- 
cence, visiting  her   penalties  upon    the  vicious  and 


indolent.  But  for  the  young  and  for  those  not  yet 
hopelessly  degraded,  he  would  provide,  first,  the 
necessary  conditions  of  physical  health,  as  a  chief 
foundation  of  morality,  and  then  add  the  guidance 
and  stimulation  of  education,  and  the  training  and 
protection  of  hard  work.  In  "  Further  Studies  of 
Criminals,"  he  briefly  draws  the  lessons  learned  from 
his  laborious  investigations. 

In  discussing  the  question  of  intermittent  in- 
dustry, he  says:  "It  was  shown  that  one  of  the 
causes  of  idle  habits  was  primarily  physical  and 
mental  disease.  *  -  *  *  The  first  condition, 
therefore  of  social  and  moral  regeneration  is  public 
health.  The  draining  of  lands,  the  sewerage  of 
cities,  the  ventilation  of  houses,  the  amelioration  of 
tenements,  the  cleansing  of  streets,  the  widening  of 
thoroughfares,  the  demolition  of  rear  buildings,  the 
removal  of  cesspools,  the  purity  of  water-supplies, 
the  cubic  space  allotted  to  each  person  in  dwellings, 
are  only  a  few  of  the  conditions  which,  if  observed, 
will  so  improve  the  health  of  the  general  community 
that  they  will  be  more  capable,  and  for  that  reason 
willing,  to  do  their  work  without  exhaustion  than 
they  now  are,  and  with  this  additional  increment  of 
vitality  will  need  less  and  therefore  consume  less  of 
inebriating  stimulants  than  they  now  do.  Public 
health   will   re-act    against    intemperance    in   all  its 


IO 


forms,  and  this  again  will  re-act  in  maintaining  and 
perfecting  public  health.  In  a  community  in  which 
its  infants  are  blessed  with  the  advantages  of  perfect 
hygienic  training,  the  body  will  assume  that  steady, 
uninterrupted  growth  which  is  the  first  requisite  for 
the  organization  of  a  sound  mind  and  its  concomi- 
tant— a  well-balanced  life.  "••'  '::"  -  "::"  Given  a 
taste  for  steady  work  and  you  have  the  best  possi- 
ble safeguard  against  the  unbridled  indulgence  of 
the  passions,  and,  with  this,  an  effectual  check-  to 
the  formation  of  criminal  practices  which  are,  in  a 
majority  of  instances,  the  direct  result  of  indulgence 
in  exhausting  vices,  or  in  the  feverish  pursuit  of  in- 
dulgences which  a  hard-working  man  does  not  think 
of.  But  the  industrial  training,  here  advocated, 
must  net  be  the  arbitrary  imposition  of  a  formal 
task.  Work  is  not  an  education  in  its  proper  sense 
unless  it  enlists  the  putting  forth  of  the  powers  of 
body  and  mind,  simultaneously  and  cheerfully,  to 
accomplish  a  pre-determined  result." 

"■  The  Jukes  "  audi  "  Further  Studies  of  Criminals," 
speedily  attained  a  high  reputation  as  unique  and 
valuable  works.  Mr.  Dugdale  followed  them  by  a 
number  of  essays  on  sociological  subjects  published 
in  tlie  Westminister  Rcviczv,  the  North  American  Re- 
7'iezi',  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  other  periodicals. 
This    was    in    addition    to    the    essentially    literal'}' 


II 

work  he  did  for  the  various  bodies  of  which  he  was 
a  member,  the  reports  and  public  addresses  com- 
posed by  him  for  them,  and  the  papers  read  before 
them  at  their  meetings.  His  literary  composition 
was  done  in  an  attractive,  nervous,  and  vigorous 
style,  but  with  a  considerate  deference  to  the  opin- 
ions and  studies  of  other  men,  and  .  with  a  modest 
and  continuous  acknowledgment  of  the  large  ex- 
tent and  complex  nature  of  the  problems  upon 
which  he  was  engaged,  always  forbidding,  as  they 
did,  narrow  and  dogmatic  assertions. 

In  18S0  Mr.  Dugdale  became  the  first  Secretary 
of  the  Society  for  Political  Education.  This  again 
was  labor  in  the  field  of  social  improvement.  Valu- 
able as  had  been  the  work  done  by  political  parties 
in  discussing  political  questions,  the  work  was  still 
always  limited  by  the  fancied  necessities,  frequent 
pretences,  and  dexterous  timidity  of  partisan  con- 
flicts. Every  effort  at  prison  reform,  at  the  com- 
pulsory sanitary  protection  of  the  very  poor  and 
the  very  young,  had  to  be  successful,  if  at  all, 
through  legislative  or  executive  bodies,  made  up 
almost  entirely  of  men  in  political  life.  It  was  a 
most  serious  obstacle  to  the  advance  of  the  reforms 
on  which  Mr.  Dugdale's  heart  was  set,  that  these 
men  were  often  chosen  as  the  result  of  skilful  in- 
trigue or  as  a  reward   for  the   lowest  order  of  par- 


12 


tisan  activity.  Men  so  chosen  could  not  be  equal 
to  the  statesmanlike  work  appropriate  to  the  offices 
they  held.  And  it  was  plainly  seen  that  the  popu- 
lar choice  of  public  officers  would  continue  to  be  so 
made  as  long  as  public  opinion  was  not  directed  to 
administrative  efficiency  and  honor,  but  was  swayed 
by  vague  sentiments  cleverly  heated  by  rival  parti- 
sans for  election  emergencies,  or  by  corrupt  and 
sinister  influences  designed  to  prevent  either  party 
from  taking  a  distinct  position  upon  any  matter  of 
real  public  moment, — and  so  long  as  popular  in- 
terest in  political  questions  was  not  sufficiently 
wide-spread  or  well-enough  disciplined  to  compel 
parties  to  take  sides  upon  them.  The  education  of 
the  people  in  true  politics,  it  seemed,  therefore,  to 
Mr.  Dugdale  and  his  associates,  would  not  only 
greatly  aid  popular  judgment  on  political  questions, 
but  would  be  a  necessary  preliminary  to  the  elec- 
tion (jf  public  representatives  and  officers  upon  real 
issues.  It  elections  were  so  held,  successful  candi- 
dates would  come  generally  to  be  men  competent 
to  consider  and  expert  in  dealing  with  questions  of 
state  and  administration.  And  if  legislators  and 
executives  were  so  competent  and  expert,  and  were 
not  merely  men  accomplished  in  intrigue  or  active 
in  part\-  contests,  we  should  have  from  them  con- 
scientious and  intelligent  consideration  of  measures 


13 

intended  to  aid  vital  social  reforms.  Legislative 
committees,  governors,  mayors,  commissioners  of 
charities  and  corrections,  superintendents  of  prisons, 
reformatories,  almshouses,  hospitals,  would  then 
patiently  listen  and  intelligently  act  upon  discus- 
sions of  the  condition  of  the  extremely  poor  and 
the  vicious,  and  especially  of  children  and  young 
men  and  women  not  yet  hopelessly  hardened.  The 
work  of  the  Society  for  Political  Education  was 
thus  closely  related  to  the  beneficent  labors  to 
which  Mr.  Dugdale  had  given  his  life. 

The  Society  received  from  Air.  Dugdale  the  most 
zealous  and  intelligent  service  from  its  beginning 
until  he  was  overmastered  by  disease.  Under  his 
administration  the  Society  rapidly  grew  in  numbers 
and  reputation  until,  at  his  death,  it  is  no  exaggera- 
tion to  say  that  it  had  become  a  valuable  factor  in  the 
creation  and  direction  of  American  public  sentiment. 

In  March,  1883,  the  disorder  of  the  heart,  which, 
had  for  years  been  his  ominous  companion,  over- 
came him.  In  April,  however,  he  returned  in- 
domitably to  the  work  of  the  Society  and  to  his 
interest  in  his  fellow-men.  This  was  but  a  respite 
of  two  or  three  weeks.  His  cruel  enemy  was  at  last 
victorious.  After  several  weeks  of  intense  agony, 
borne  with  imperturbable  sweetness  of  temper,  he 
died  on  the  23d  of  July,  1883,  at  his  residence    in 


H 


Morton  Street,  New  York,  made  by  him  the  familiar 
office  of  this  Society. 

Though  of  slight  frame,  and  in  spite  of  his  phys- 
ical suffering,  Mr.  Uugdale  was  a  man  of  remarkable 
activity  and  persistence.  And  this  activity  and 
persistence  were  due  to  a  courageous  and  loft}'  res- 
olution which  neither  sickness  nor  suffering  could 
abate.  Nor  did  they  prevent  his  temper  from  being 
equable.  His  manners  were  always  considerate  and 
oftentimes  diffident.  His  personal  bearing  showed 
the  simple  and  sincere  earnestness  and  the  sympa- 
thetic concern  for  others,  which  were  plain  charac- 
teristics of  the  man. 

Mr.  Dugdale's  associates  in  the  Society  feel  that 
his  place  cannot  be  filled.  His  work,  however,  sur- 
vives him.  and  must  be  done.  He  leaves  to  us  a 
hopeful  belief  that  Americans  have  only  begun  the 
era  of  wide  political  intelligence,  of  a  greater  and 
more  constant  care  for  the  methods  of  government 
and  for  the  capacity  and  honor  of  public  servants, 
of  the  more  scrupulous  and  jealous  regard  for  the 
rights  of  men  who  belong  to  no  easily-heard  class,  a 
regard  which  the  end  of  administrative  abuses  is 
sure  to  create,  and  of  a  sounder  and  steadier  mercy 
toward  those  of  whom  it  is  doubtful  whether  their 
wickedness  is  due  to  their  misery  or  their  misery  is 
due  to  their  wickedness. 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


Series  9482 


